Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults.

Don't show me this message again

Klavieralbum für die Jugend, Op 68

Introduction

Though Bach, Mozart and others had written music for young and inexpert performers, Schumann was the first great composer to penetrate imaginatively into the world of children. The earliest of his works to evoke childhood was Kinderszenen (‘Scenes of Childhood’) of 1838, whose tender portraits of a carefree innocence are intimately bound up with his longing for Clara Wieck. But, though technically undemanding, the Kinderszenen are essentially adults’ music, in Schumann’s words ‘reminiscences of a grown-up for grown-ups’. Ten years later, now married to Clara and with three daughters, Schumann composed his Album for the Young, a collection of forty-three miniatures written specifically for children. The first pieces were intended as a birthday present for his eldest daughter, Marie, who was seven on 1 September 1848; then, as Schumann wrote to a friend, ‘one after another was added’, with a gradual increase in difficulty. As an entry in Clara’s family diary reveals, Schumann was encouraged to produce an extended collection of pieces for children by the thought that most of the music learned in piano lessons was worthless; and his didactic purpose is underlined by his original intention of supplementing the pieces with extracts from other composers’ works, and by the list of musical maxims (Musikalische Haus- und Lebensregeln) which he added to the second, 1851, edition of the Album. These include such pungently worded precepts as ‘Don’t just tinkle at the keys!’ and ‘Play rhythmically! Many virtuosi sound like a drunkard walking! Don’t imitate them!’

The Album falls into two parts, with the first eighteen pieces designed for young children and the later numbers for ‘more grown-up’ players. But even in the last pieces Schumann shields his pianists from the more difficult keys: nowhere does he venture beyond three flats or four sharps. Perhaps surprisingly, all the pieces are in duple (2/4 and 4/4) or compound duple (6/8) time. But Schumann creates a wealth of rhythmic diversity within his self-imposed limitations, and monotony only creeps in when all the pieces are dutifully played one after the other—a notion which would surely have horrified the composer.

It is only to be expected that the first, and simplest, pieces, written expressly for Marie, should contain little of the poetry found in many of the later ones. Each is designed to highlight a particular technical point—legato and staccato playing, dotted rhythms and so on. But Schumann’s love of cryptic allusions could well lie behind the very opening of the first piece, whose descending five-note scale had come to assume a special significance in his work, closely associated with his love for Clara. A different kind of allusion occurs in Soldaten­marsch (‘Soldiers’ March’), whose initial bars recreate in duple time the beginning of the Scherzo in Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata for violin and piano. The fourth piece, Ein Choral, designed to develop a smooth legato, is a simple harmoniza­tion of the chorale ‘Rejoice O my soul’ used by Bach and others; Schumann is to treat the same melody much more elaborately in No 42, Figurierter Choral. A more lively note is introduced with the ‘Little Hunting Song’ (Jägerliedchen, No 7), with its buoyant 6/8 metre and crisp staccato writing, while the following number, Wilder Reiter (‘The Wild Rider’), in similar metre, is the first to entrust part of the melodic line to the left hand.

One of the most touching of the early numbers is ‘Little Folksong’ (Volksliedchen, No 9), which contrasts mournful D minor music with a dance-like centrepiece in D major. Here Schumann is already demanding sharp emotional responses from his young players. A similar acute characterization is needed for No 12 (Knecht Ruprecht), with its eerie unisons in the depths of the keyboard and adventurously modulating central episode. (The ‘Knecht Ruprecht’ of the title is, in German folklore, the mischievous helper of Santa Claus.) In complete contrast are the two delightful numbers which evoke spring: No 13, Mai, lieber Mai, the first of several pieces in the Album to suggest Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, and the more inward-looking and chromatic No 15, Frühlings­gesang, where the soft pedal is used to deepen the music’s rapt contemplation.

The second part of the Album opens with ‘Little Romance’ (Kleine Romanze), whose melodic shape, texture and faint sense of agitation again call to mind Mendelssohn. Several of the more boisterous numbers in Part Two carry descriptive titles similar to those in the first part, though the music is now more intricately worked. Especially characterful are ‘The Horse­man’ (Reiterstück, No 23) with its magical coda fading into the distance; ‘Echoes of the Theatre’ (Nachklänge aus dem Theater, No 25), which imitates various sounds of the orchestra; and No 36, Lied italienischer Marinari (‘Italian Sailor’s Song’), with its fiery tarantella rhythms. But Schumann dispenses with picturesque childlike rides for the more reflective numbers which predominate in the second part of the Album. These include two numbers with literary associ­ations (Sheherazade and Mignon, with their exquisite veiled sonorities) and two in which Schumann pays tribute to fellow composers: No 28, Erinnerung—‘Remembrance’ (with its allusion, quite possibly intentional, to the song ‘Dein Bildnis wunderselig’ from the Op 39 Liederkreis), which is dedicated to the memory of Mendelssohn, who had died in November 1847; and Nordisches Lied (‘Northern Song’, No 41), sub­titled ‘Greetings to Niels Gade’ in which the first four notes G-A-D-E represent the Danish composer’s name.

Among those pieces which bear no extra-musical des­cription, the three untitled numbers (21, 26 and 30) are in Schumann’s most intimate lyrical vein. Another Beethoven allusion, this time to the trio ‘Euch werde Lohn’ from Fidelio, occurs in the searching, harmonically subtle No 21.

Even finer is No 30, with its rich textures and yearning chromaticism. Schumann also includes three pieces designed to introduce the player to various types of counterpoint. No 27 is a canon at the octave, led first by the right, then by the left hand, while No 40, Kleine Fuge, takes the form of a moto perpetuo prelude followed by a fugue whose puckish 6/8 subject is a transformation of the prelude’s opening phrase. The final contrapuntal number is the Figurierter Choral, No 42, in which the melody first heard in No 4 is enriched with flowing counter-melodies. But it is characteristic of the Album that these contrapuntal pieces should contain nothing of dry pedantry. As in the whole collection, Schumann’s didactic purpose is balanced by the freshness of his poetic imagination and the extraordinary sympathy and understanding he shows for the mind of a child.

'The simplest songs, often unpromising on the page, are done with touching ingenuousness and candour. Both singers are natural storytellers with a twi ...'In the piano pieces and songs alike, Johnson plays with luminous tone and a natural feeling for Schumannesque rubato. And as ever, his sleeve notes a ...» More

'An adventurous and well-devised recital, as well played as it is recorded' (Gramophone)'A wholly delectable recital, and not just for children either. First class. Highly recommended for late-night listening' (The Penguin Guide to Compac ...» More

The ladybird’s children are threatened by the spider’s evil machinations; with their mother captive in a child’s hands, they would have been equally likely to have become orphaned. Schumann was acutely aware of the poignancy of this unfortunate status, part of his concern for every kind of vulnerable being; he understands, only too well, the fear of every child that they will be abandoned by their parents. The orphanage was a large institution in every nineteenth-century German town; the orphans, who regularly processed through the streets to encourage financial contributions from the community, were an ever-present reminder to ordinary children of their own good luck. Parents seldom failed to remind offspring of the thin thread of fate which kept them safe in the parental home, and which could be broken at any time. Mothers often died in childbirth and a whole family of children could find themselves institutionalized. The incidence of illness and epidemics of every kind could change a family’s fortune overnight. Robert lost his father as a teenager, and it was only Clara Schumann’s determination to resume her playing career after Robert’s early death that spared her children the shame of having to rely on the charity of others.

On Sunday 28/16 April 1844, during their Russian tour (note the conflict of two calendars) the Schumanns visited a large Moscow orphanage. Clara gave a concert there, and afterwards the couple were shown around what seems to have been an exceptionally well-run establishment – the standards of cleanliness and care described in detail in Clara’s diary seem superior to the reputations of such institutions in Russia today. Many of the babies were illegitimate and brought to the orphanage by their mothers. The children were baptized on arrival: ‘The mothers need give neither their names, nor say anything else. They are asked nothing, only what the name of the child is, and what religion it is. While we were there two children were brought in, numbers 2359 and 2360 in this year alone. At least 20 children arrive every day!’

The key is A minor, a tonality we have already visited for the music of the tormented little owl who is very much a loner. Schumann’s musical response is extraordinarily close to that of Fremder Mann; in fact Armes Waisenkind is a slowed-down version of almost the same music – albeit transposed into another key. There is a similar ascending phrase, and a second phrase that caps and answers the first. The implication of these matching melodies is clear: Schumann associates being an orphan with fear and uncertainty. To be without one’s parents to protect you is to give yourself up to the control of the ‘Fremder Mann’, the stranger who will come to take you away from your home – like being sold into slavery in many a fairy tale. The fate of Hansel and Gretel, abandoned in a wood, also comes to mind. In this shuffling, slow-motion march we hear the music of the broken spirit. The mood is one of tentative supplication and passive acceptance. The eyes are downcast, and the circumstances humiliatingly humble. At a time when there was no state aid for orphanages, and no social services, the orphans relied on institutionalized begging for their survival.

We leave the parlour and return into the open air. This was the concluding piece of Maries Geburtstagsalbum, the birthday book for his daughter which was the original inspiration for a longer Klavieralbum für die Jugend. This breezy collage of hunting horns and riders was one of the pieces that Eugenie Schumann commented on, remembering the words of her mother: ‘I see the whole hunt as if it were physically in front of me. The horns are blowing, the horses are prancing, everything rushes by.’ In bars 11 and 12, and then 15 and 16 (triplet figures in musical parentheses which seem to shake with alarm) Clara Schumann heard ‘the rustling of the game beaten out of the undergrowth’. Four bars from the end there is a displaced accent in the right hand; this was apparently supposed to suggest the squeaking of a badly played horn – a detail that flies by before it can be savoured as such.

The music is in three parts. The first section is marked ‘In klagender Ton’ (‘mournfully’). The middle section is marked ‘Lustig’ (‘happily’) – a complete change of mood without an alteration of the pulse – and the piece ends with a recapitulation of the opening section. Once again the inspiration is rural, which is hardly surprising with this title, and once again Schumann succeeds in finding music of the outdoors which seems to breathe the spirit of his native land. The following piece in the set is the famous Fröhlicher Landmann – translated by the Victorians as ‘The merry peasant’ – and Schumann has prepared this dignified lament as a contrast to that jovial outburst of bonhomie. The right-hand melody seems suitable for an oboe (it might be the sound of a shepherd piping to his flock) and the left hand’s spread chords are harp-like. The middle section in D major is in fact a variation on the main D minor melody, a Schubertian device, as in the song Im Frühling. As in other pieces in both albums for the young, we feel Schumann being drawn into a folk-song style. And why should he bother to go into the fields with a song-gatherer’s notebook when his imagination can provide something as haunting, and seemingly authentic, as this?

‘Knecht Ruprecht’ is nowhere to be found in that most English of books, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. He is a character peculiar to the Christmas tradition of German-speaking lands (where he is also variously known as ‘Pelznickel’ and ‘Bartel’). England imported the Christmas tree from this same tradition; perhaps there was something kindly about Prince Albert that drew the line about importing Knecht Ruprecht into England. Ruprecht, a familiar figure in German folklore since the seventeenth century, is a vassal of St Nikolaus; his function is to deal with children in a hands-on manner unbefitting his holy employer. Tradition has it that on the evening of 6 December (the feast of St Nikolaus) Ruprecht, always wrapped in fur and with a white beard, knocks on the door of children’s houses. (The role would often be played by working-class family acquaintances who would dress up for the occasion – this according to Thomas Mann in Buddenbrooks.) On Knecht Ruprecht’s left shoulder is a bag full of rewards for good children – apples and golden nuts (again, according to Mann). On his right shoulder he carries a cane, or birch, which he will use relentlessly once he has separated good children from bad. This omniscient little man knows what every child has done, or said, during the preceding year, and this selection process struck terror into the hearts of generations of German schoolchildren who were fearful of the impending visit. (For this terror tactic to have been effective there must have been at least some parents who allowed their more spirited children to be beaten by a stranger dressed up in a ridiculous costume.) One concludes that the German attitude to the education of children, even in Schumann’s time, was more severe than in England. I can think of no English custom which has ever filled children with anxiety within the safety of their own homes.

In musical terms the piano piece is related to Fremder Mann, the unknown intruder into nursery life. Knecht Ruprecht’s reputation was only too well known to German children, and the musical portrait is more sinister, more like a gnome or pixie, than anything to be found in the more noble, if unfriendly, bearing of Fremder Mann. The piece is in A minor. Grotesque semiquavers rumble in the bass and culminate in a hammered phrase (two quavers and a crotchet) which represent Knecht Ruprecht’s knocking at the door. There is a great deal of bluster in this music – Ruprecht’s aggressive arrival, and the children’s shocked reactions. The piece’s middle section (in agitated F major semiquavers) depicts fear in the nursery. Eugenie Schumann, the composer’s youngest daughter, noted: ‘In the F major interlude I see the trembling children hiding themselves; and then the old man speaks to them in a kindly manner, empties his bags of presents, and then clatters down the stairs.’ This implies that, in the Schumann home at least, Knecht Ruprecht’s bark was more terrifying than his bite. In the end this piano music makes the same impression.

This, rather more than other items in the Klavieralbum, is a fully worked-out, fully fledged, piano piece in the manner of a Mendelssohn Song without Words, and in the Mendelssohnian key of E major. This is perfect Schumann however, brilliantly conceived – all derived, with the greatest compositional economy, from the dancing little motif announced in the piece’s opening two bars. The secret of the music’s particular enchantment is that it is light and bright – as childlike as a spring day. This deftness and sparkle is achieved by the work’s tessitura – the majority of the piece is written with both hands in the treble clef and the left hand only rarely descends to the lower regions of the pianoforte. The fastidiously marked articulation (copious use of staccato and mezzo staccato in the piano-writing) also places spring in the music’s step. The use of imitation between the hands is handled with great skill, and the subtle chromaticism of the harmonic twists and turns does not disturb the deliberate mood of artless naivety. All in all, this is a piece which sounds a good deal more simple than it turns out to be – it is as natural as a flowering bloom in the garden which owes its growth to the lavish care of an astute gardener.

There is something seraphic in this rippling music which once again, in a way already very old-fashioned for 1848, suggests Bach – this time the composer of the First Prelude from the ‘48’. The whole piece is an exercise in evenness of touch and control of dynamics. The pianist’s fingers fly etherially through the staves while fragments of hidden melody are pricked out in the upper fingers of the right hand.

The avian theme of Käuzlein continues, rather unexpectedly, in this piano piece. The lieder lover will immediately think of the famous Goethe love poem (‘Ach, wer bringt die schönen Tage’), and the equally famous Schubert setting, when encountering this title. Ludwig Richter, the illustrator of the wonderfully drawn frontispiece for the Klavieralbum obviously interpreted ‘first loss’ on a different level, and this was certainly after discussion with the composer himself. Richter’s illustration shows that the child’s first loss is the death of a pet: his drawing (see left) shows the face of a devastated little girl contemplating the upturned body of a bird, an open cage in the background. This goes back to an incident in the Schumann household – on 5 January 1848 – when the composer fed a bone-marrow dumpling to his daughter’s pet finch. The bird seemed to enjoy its meal but paid with its life. One can imagine how mortified Schumann himself must have been by his mistake. The upbeat and descending phrase at the beginning of this piece seems reminiscent of Käuzlein; ‘Nicht schnell’ is the marking of both pieces, and both are in the minor key. The plight of the little bird is melodically entwined with the tearful reaction of its owner – little girl and little bird seem both to belong to a similar world of injured innocence. And there is another voice to be heard, that of Schumann himself: in the second half of the song the lament of the opening is taken up by the left hand in the tenor register of the piano. This is surely Papa himself soothing his child’s grief, and adding his own voice of sorrow. Marie Schumann wrote a song entitled Nänie inspired by this incident: it is a setting of Ludwig Bechstein’s Vögleins Begräbnis – ‘The little bird’s burial’. Schumann père also set it for women’s chorus and piano as Op 114 No 1. The poem was found in the Scherer anthology of 1849 in which Der Sandmann was discovered.

This is another deeply German creation. Its simple chorale-like melody, underpinned by a real breadth of feeling, seems to have come from the soil of the Fatherland and the simple folk who wield the plough to make it fertile. We are reminded that Schumann worked on the very brink of the period when folk song became the passion of serious composers – as was definitely the case with Brahms. Eugenie Schumann, youngest daughter of Robert and Clara, had an interpretative idea of the piece which must have come directly from her mother: ‘It is clear that in Ländliches Lied only one girl sings at first [bars 1–8], then the chorus of boys and girls joins in [bars 9–16]. A girl intones the second section [bars 17–25] and at the repeat of the first theme one of the boys blows a simple descant on his recorder.’ There is something serious and devotional about this music despite the more light-hearted middle section. The part-writing is similar to that found in the introduction to the next song, Sonntag. In that piece, also thanks to Schumann’s music, we never doubt that Hoffmann’s text is describing a Sunday deep in the country.

The three little stars of the title are a mystery; there are three pieces scattered through Op 68 which bear this inscription, all of them particularly tender and heartfelt. Alfred Dörffel, the work’s first critic, regarded this triangle of asterisks as expressive of the mute and instinctive compassion of children – ‘a purity of spirit which, when encountering pain for the first time, allows the sound of words to melt into silent sadness, something only music can express’. Not for the first time we hear the composer’s voice in tones rather than words.

But words are also implicit here, and they speak of a tender offering, enshrined in solemn ceremony. The melody is derived from the trio in the second act of Beethoven’s Fidelio (‘Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten’) when Florestan, believing he is about to die, receives bread and wine from Leonore’s hands. Schumann’s piece is written in a radiant C major, the tonality of purity. It is interesting that the other Beethoven melody (from the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte) which appears in Schumann’s piano Fantaisie, and in Süßer Freund from Frauenliebe und -leben, is also transposed into this unblemished key. In a postlude (eventually cut from the final version of the Klavieralbum) Schumann weaves this fragment of Fidelio melody as if it were a duet between soprano and tenor – a dialogue between right hand and left, Leonore and Florestan. The closing bars of the extant version are still worthy of a postlude for one of Schumann’s lieder. The reference to a ‘better world’, referred to in the Beethoven trio, leads us to the beginning of Op 79 and a description of the distant evening star.

This is a virtuoso description of something that is almost cinematic in its detail – long shot, followed by close-up, then long shot again. The music depicts a rider, or a group of riders. In these ominous rumblings we hear first the approach, and then the departure, of one or more horsemen. These are men on a mission and we detect a certain grim menace in their determination. It is a scenario which is easily understandable by young pianists who have yet to grapple with more emotional musical issues. The music begins with the thundering of hooves far in the distance, pianissimo. In bars 6 to 7 there is a crescendo. Bars 9 to 16 are fortissimo; we sense that the horses are almost on top of us here as they gallop past. The remainder of the piece – marked ‘Nach and nach schwächer’ (‘gradually weaker’) and then ‘Immer schwächer’ (‘always weaker’) – is an extended exercise in cavalry retreat.

For more than half of the piece the music becomes less dense, and less animated. Eventually the tremor of semiquavers gives way to quavers and dotted-crotchet chords in the bass clef. The riders who, only seconds before, had been pounding through the staves, seem to dematerialize before our very ears. Schumann had always been interested in making music dissolve like a ‘drift of foam’ – the ‘eitel Schaum’ which closes the Dichterliebe setting Aus alten Märchen. This is another brilliant example of a musical hairpin, evaporation, a depiction of the Doppler effect long before fast cars and ambulances.

For every one of the sandman’s beautiful dreams there is a corresponding nightmare. Schumann has chosen a very general title to describe the intrusion of something frightening into a child’s life. This man is not dangerous through guile or maliciousness, he is straightforwardly gruff and unfriendly. He does not like children very much, and the little ones are temporarily cowed into silence. It is as if Beethoven himself has stumbled into the nursery, and not at all in a good mood. This gives Schumann an excuse to write a Beethovenian scherzo – the nearest thing in the Klavieralbum für die Jugend to a fully developed piano sonata movement. The key is D minor which is crucially Beethovenian; the final bars of the piece are certainly reminiscent of the peremptory and gestural dotted rhythms of the scherzo of the Ninth Symphony. As a foil to the emphatic march there is a recurring middle section of oscillating semiquavers. These denote the fear and trembling of the youngsters – perhaps something to do with the awe in which all young German musicians were brought up to regard this colossus among composers. Despite the fact that this is blustery and potentially frightening music, there is something about it which assures the listener that the children are never remotely in any real danger. They are of an age when it amuses them to make a drama out of everyday domestic events. Perhaps their father has had a visitor who seems crotchety at a distance. Their baleful response is the theatre of the nursery, one of the many games of make-believe that enliven children’s existences, and nurture the imaginative faculties of future artists.

Goethe’s Mignon was a character ineffably dear to Schumann. Her plight, however fictional, fitted the patterns which immediately engaged his sympathy. She was an abandoned little girl, small in build, hard done-by, loyal, passionate, resourceful and afflicted with a tragic destiny (she was the child of an incestuous union). Her exploited status (in Wilhelm Meister, the eponymous hero rescues her from being a rope-dancer in a circus) appealed to the composer’s left-leaning hatred of injustice. In short, this highly strung Italian orphan was an ideal Schumannian icon, just as she would have been a character on whom Dickens would have lavished his attention. It is no surprise that after the success of ‘Kennst du das Land?’ (Op 79 No 29, see track ep below) Schumann went on to compose three further Mignon songs as part of his Op 98a: ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’, ‘Heiss mich nicht reden’ and ‘So lasst mich scheinen’. He then decided that ‘Kennst du das Land?’ should reappear in another incarnation in a new opus, thus Op 98a No 1. But his devotion to this character was not to end there; he was to follow Mignon’s destiny after her early death and to mark her funeral with a work drawn from Goethe’s description of the obsequies: Requiem für Mignon, is joined to the Wilhelm Meister settings of Op 98a. This work, Op 98b, is a piece for five solo voices, chorus and orchestra. This places Schumann at the forefront of all other Mignon enthusiasts among lied composers.

This little piano piece is yet another manifestation of Schumann’s loyalty, but it is unusual in that it illustrates a part of Mignon’s story that is passed over in all other musical sources. The composer’s original title for the piece was Tightrope-dancing girl. This changed to Mignon (dancing on the tightrope). The final title dropped the reference to the young girl’s balancing act, but the exquisite little illustration by Ludwig Richter (in one of the panels for the cover of the Klavieralbum, see below) takes account of the composer’s original thoughts. Here she is depicted balancing on a tightrope with the aid of a long stick. She also seems to be wearing angel’s wings. These may also be something to do with her balance on the trapeze; but it is probably the conflation of two aspects of her story. Towards the end of the novel Mignon chooses to wear angel’s wings for her last appearance at the orphanage; this is in connection with the lyric ‘So lasst mich scheinen bis ich werde’. Has Richter confused the two incidents and illustrated them as one?

The song settings associated with Mignon are to be found in the novel only after she has come under the protection of Wilhelm Meister. Once he has become her protector, her ‘Beschützer’, she sings ‘Kennst du das Land?’ to him. She then sings ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ as a duet with the harper, that mysterious and neurotic man, also part of Wilhelm’s entourage, who turns out to be Mignon’s father. In this little piano piece we encounter Mignon long before she sings these lyrics, towards the beginning of the novel (Book Two, Chapter Four). She is performing in the acrobat’s troupe into which she has been sold in virtual slavery. Wilhelm feels an immediate sympathy for her, a deep fascination in fact, and he soon arranges to buy her out of her punitive contract for the sum of thirty thalers.

The music suggests concentration of the highest order. The sweetness of the little performer is evident in this E flat major prelude in which the outlines of a halting melody are sketched by upward stretches of the little finger of the right hand; these are as tentative as Mignon’s movements. The swaying of the tightrope as she attempts to keep her balance is evident from the billowing quavers of the right hand. The seemingly rather perverse fp markings on the fourth beat of each bar make sense only if we realize that Mignon needs to stop and steady herself before moving on to the next harmonic position. She is clearly no virtuoso or show-off in this difficult work, but she traverses the tightrope with a certain teetering grace. Schumann perfectly conveys the girl’s attempts at poise, her sweetness, and also the pathos of her situation: a person of her pride and sensibility suffers the deepest humiliation when she is exhibited in this fashion. Her ‘owner’ beats her and Wilhelm Meister comes to her rescue. This little piano piece, describing Mignon before Wilhelm knew her, is a prelude to all the famous songs which follow in the novel – settings of Schubert, Wolf, Liszt et alia. It is also a fitting prelude to Schumann’s own ‘Kennst du das Land?’.

As an epilogue to this performance of Schumann’s Liederalbum some of Mignon’s merrier countrymen make an appearance. (As it happens this piece is published immediately after Mignon in the Klavieralbum.) The composer visited Italy in 1829 and came back with many happy memories of what he had experienced, including Guiditta Pasta singing in La Scala, Milan, with mesmerizing intensity (the music was by Rossini).

‘Kennst du das Land?’ ended with a tiny pianistic motif – a miniature signpost pointing in the direction of Italy. The piano piece begins with a musical gesture in return, as loud and confident as Mignon’s is mysterious and self-effacing. A pianissimo echo of this forte motif (a rising augmented fourth in dotted rhythm) implies a response from the distance. These identical motifs sound very like the gondoliers’ calls which were noted from life by Britten in Death in Venice (‘Aou! Stagando, aou!’) – the boatmen’s warnings to avoid collisions in Venice’s crowded canals. Schumann took a long gondola journey (‘far, far out to sea’, he wrote) on 5 October 1829; he confessed to seasickness.

If Venice is the inspiration for the piece’s opening three bars (‘Langsam’), the main part of this ‘lied’ (marked ‘Schnell’) is rather more Neapolitan; this is a hornpipe, a nautical tarantella. Here we have the energy and brilliance, the sheer musical cheek, for which Italy was famous. Hugo Wolf fell in love with the contemporary smash hit ‘Faniculi, fanicula’; here Schumann, nearly fifty years earlier, writes something similar, a veritable étude in staccato thirds.

Images of William Tell in the Swiss mountains suggest snow, and snow returns us to theme of winter. Here is a winter prelude to the exquisite Rückert song of the snowdrop that follows. This is one of the very last pieces in the Klavieralbum to be completed (September 1848), a few days before the composer sent off the manuscript to be engraved by the publishers. This is one of Schumann’s perfect little miniatures, music for a child to listen to, easy enough to be played by a child, but containing every grain of adult experience (and heartache) that the composer could possibly pour into his music. The piece is closely related to Erster Verlust bu, a variation on that piece’s falling sequences and musical sighs. In the second half of Winterzeit these falling fourths are counterbalanced by interjections answering the plaint (as if in reassurance) in the upper regions of the treble clef. This is part-writing where thematic fragments entwine like fingers clasped in prayer. Schumann seems always to have an uncanny ability to summon an atmosphere, and to hold us in the palm of his hand with the exquisite pacing of his harmonic progressions.

The mood of this spacious and noble piece, one of the most effective in the entire collection, is that of the sound of bells resounding across the countryside. The piano-writing (minims singing in the pianist’s right hand) is reminiscent of the accompaniment to Die wandelnde Glocke.

There are two pieces in Schumann’s Klavieralbum which are not, strictly speaking, original pieces of music. These are the two chorale arrangements in the collection: No 4, entitled simply Ein Choral (an elementary piano piece written out in minims with a few passing notes in crotchets) and this one, the penultimate piece in the collection. These are Schumann’s arrangements of the same chorale, Freue dich, o meine Seele, which had been known to Lutherans since the early seventeenth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century the melody was famous throughout Europe. Inspired by a Calvinist church service, Franz Liszt quotes it in his Psaume 42 de l’église à Genève from Album d’un voyageur (1842), but the chorale fails to survive into that work’s next incarnation, the Années de pèlerinage, Première Année (1855).

Schumann has probably been reminded of the tune by the Liszt piano piece, but he might well have known it already in its original religious context. He makes no attempt, however, to keep to any historical style once he begins to harmonize the melody – in his hands it becomes pure Schumann, even in the very simple harmonization of Ein Choral. The Figurierter Choral has the F major melody harmonized at first in D minor, although the piece ends, most meltingly, in the major key. The melody and its supporting harmony stay in four parts throughout; but it is the addition of a fifth voice, a meandering counter-melody in the lower part of the treble stave, which gives the piece its character and its fantasy. It is this colouring of the original chorale by continually flowing quavers which gives rise to the term ‘figuriert’ or ‘figured’ – this improvisatory technique had been favoured by the Cantors of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig (where Bach himself was choirmaster and organist) since the eighteenth century. As someone who had lived in Leipzig for a long time (and heard countless performances in the Thomaskirche) Schumann knew the practice well; here he uses it in a modern way.